


after the end of the world

by covellite



Series: ARFOV [6]
Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Slavery, it's not called slavery but that's basically what's going on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28234353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/covellite/pseuds/covellite
Summary: When she is eleven, the world ends, but she doesn't. AKA Cleo's backstory in this AU.
Relationships: ZombieCleo & ImpulseSV
Series: ARFOV [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2059134
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	after the end of the world

When she is eleven, the world ends. The movies always made it seem so sudden, but it wasn't really. There's stories on the news of some strange murder, maybe a bizarre Satanic cult or something. She isn't allowed to watch the news, but she hears it sometimes anyways. The murders happen more often and more violently, then the word "vampire" starts getting thrown around, and then the military tries to get involved but it's already too late. A few politicians, important ones probably, go missing and all the talk of the military goes silent.

She gets sent to live with her aunt in a little village by the ocean. She used to like spending her summers there, but now it's too quiet and she's not allowed out of the house. Her parents call her often at first, then less often, and then not at all. Her aunt doesn't have a television, but the boy next door says her city was bombed to pieces by another country's government after vampires slaughtered half the people who lived there. Most of her friends left the city around the same time she did, but she still wonders about them.

By the time she's fifteen her aunt is dead from a heart attack and the word vampire is used so often it doesn't even sound odd anymore to hear it in everyday speech. She stays in her aunt's home alone, there's no one to tell her not to. She's old enough now that the adults are less careful with her speech, and she knows the leaders of the village have made an agreement with a vampire clan nearby. People don't go missing from her village, but some adults stay locked in their homes even more often than the rest of the town.

When one of those adults dies from exhaustion, or blood loss, or  _ something _ , the adults all convene to figure out who should take his place. She volunteers. They beg her not to, but they can't sway her. Most of them have children or spouses or pet dogs to care for. She has nothing but her sketchbooks and the little wooden dolls she's been making lately.

The vampires are surprisingly nice, despite everything. They tell her they didn't want the world to be like this, and she believes them. It doesn't make the pain hurt any less.

They don't take blood from her often, it's a small clan and they only take what they need, so she still has too much time on her hands. One of the vampires was a sculptor way back when, so he helps her turn her little hobby into something bigger. He reminds her of her grandfather, if her grandfather was a twenty-five year old who wore mismatched shoes.

All in all, it's a lonely existence, but not horrible all things considered. So of course it falls to pieces.

The vampire who reminds her of her grandfather appears in her kitchen one day. He asks to turn her, says her future will be much worse if she stays human. She says no anyway, and he respects her decision, even if he does tell her she's a fool. Then he vanishes, and that's the last time she sees anyone from that clan.

The new clan is bigger and much less humane. They demand more bloodbags, and the council has no choice but to obey. They're also much more lenient about how much blood they allow themselves to take, something she learns the hard way.

She starts fighting back in her own ways. There's not much a human can do against a vampire, but she can make the extra chairs in her kitchen slightly sticky just to annoy them, can move the lights so they shine in their eyes. She spends one afternoon making the path up to her front door as uneven as possible, since she only uses the back and the vampires always use the front.

By now she's well into her twenties, and other bloodbags are dying off at worrying rates. She helps bury them, then has to turn around and ask the remaining townsfolk to volunteer. Those who do usually have nothing left. This is why it surprises her when a man from the other side of the village volunteers. He has potential, much more than she ever did, and she knows he has friends. She asks him why he'd do this to himself and he just shrugs. He's strong and healthy enough, he says, and other people aren't; it's the right thing for him to do. She wants to tell him to go back on his word, but she knows it's futile.

As much as he pretends otherwise, he hates being a bloodbag even more than she does. She tells him it will get easier with time, but she's not sure that's what he wanted to hear. She's not even sure it's true, to be honest. She's so much weaker now, but she'll be damned if she dies before at least one member of the clan does. Spite shouldn't be her main motivator, probably, but she only has one friend in this world now.

He's a big guy, intimidating almost, but she sees him coo over puppies and baby pictures too often to think he's scary. He helps make farms for the village, helps people repair the damage two decades have wrought on their houses. He even babysits the few children in the village when their parents want time alone. She's almost forgotten kindness like that could exist.

He mentions that his best friend was taken by the clan's leader years ago to be her personal bloodbag, and just saying the words out loud has him wiping tears from his eyes. She remembers this, vaguely, remembers a teenage boy with too-naive eyes following the leader out the town gates and never coming back. The boy might be alive, the leader never drinks from the town bloodbags, but she doesn't say this out loud. She wants to give her friend hope, but the thought of his best friend trapped alone in the leader's house on the hill might just break him. So instead she starts rambling about her latest sculpture, awkward as always, and doesn't even pretend to be annoyed when her friend clearly doesn't pay attention.

He's always more optimistic than she is, not that that's hard, so when the brightness starts to fade from his eyes she notices and it terrifies her. He's maybe the only good thing left in the world, and some days it's like he's dying in front of her. So she needs to get him out, get him away from the village and the clan and all the horrible things that have happened. She starts organizing the other bloodbags, making plans and drawing up schemes. The vampires never pay much attention to the going-ons of humans, so it's almost ridiculously easy to come up with an idea. It's foolproof, she thinks.

She's wrong.


End file.
